Reinventing yourself, while holding onto your roots, can be an extremely difficult process. Sometimes, a certain sustainable groove emerges from a shadow—or ghost—of your former self. Luckily for Adam Perry, Matt McDonald and Albert Suttle, previously 3/4 of Perpetual Groove, they have done just that in their new venture, Ghost Owl, and their debut album, Say Goodbye to Finland. Ghost Owl is Perry’s brainchild and he created many of the album’s songs in his living room, while Suttle remains an underappreciated and transformative rock behind the kit, and McDonald mixes elements of all of his previous musical adventures to tweak the knobs, guitar and sonic swirls into a blend of years past and EDM hits of the future. From the opening, haunting
notes of “A Horse Named Reckless,” which eventually explodes like Pop-Rocks-meeting-Cola, the album continues through a nonstop, cerebral dance-trip without letting up on tracks such as “Sky Yellow” and “Vela 500,” before emerging into what seems like the moments just before dawn with closing numbers “Clouds Will Lift” and “Sun Will Shine.” Ghost Owl’s debut is sharp, poised and cutting, with a bright future on the horizon for the flight of a reinvented band. Brian Bavosa